Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Bowen/Chambers Report in Retrospect

On April 5, 2006, accompanying his decision to cancel the lacrosse season and demand the resignation of Coach Mike Pressler, President Brodhead appointed a task force charged with “investigating” the administration’s response to the case. Former Princeton president William Bowen was a well-known critic of intercollegiate athletics and co-author, with Derek Bok, of a high-profile defense of racial preferences in the college admissions process. Julius Chambers, former general counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and NCCU chancellor, was a similarly aggressive advocate of the “diversity” agenda in higher education. Bowen and Chambers took it upon themselves to add a third member to their panel, Danielle Carr Ramdath, who their report identified as an “African-American woman.” (The report did not disclose either the race or the gender of Bowen and Chambers.)

The resulting report unsurprisingly reflected its authors’ long-held beliefs. Though claiming that they were “not arguing for filling positions of any kind by applying a race-gender quota system,” they demanded creation of new positions that women or minorities were all but certain to fill. They faulted Duke administrators for not determining Crystal Mangum’s race immediately—an argument that prompted then-Academic Council chair Paul Haagen to wonder, “I’m not sure that somehow or other we should have responded differently if it had been a white woman.” And, in a stunning passage, they explained that Duke needed to balance its students’ due process protections against the fact that “in the eyes of some faculty and others concerned with the intersecting issues of race, class, gender, and respect for people, the Athletic Department, and Duke more generally, just didn’t seem to ‘get it.’” As a result, these professors (which included Peter Wood, Karla Holloway and Houston Baker, each of whom Bowen and Chambers interviewed) saw the lacrosse team as the “manifestation of a white, elitist arrogant sub-culture that was both indulged and self-indulgent.”

Shortly after the document appeared, Stuart Taylor penned a National Journal column observing how Bowen, Chambers, and Carr Ramdath appeared determined to “slime the lacrosse players in a report . . . that is a parody of race-obsessed political correctness.”

More than a year later, the Bowen/Chambers report remains the sole official review of the Brodhead administration’s performance in the case. In light of all the information that has emerged since the report was filed on May 4, 2006 (much of which Bowen and Chambers had access to at the time), it seemed useful to review the report’s conclusions.

A note: I twice e-mailed Bowen inviting his comment; I said I would print his reply unedited. He did not respond. I also e-mailed Carr Ramdath; she responded by saying that she would decline to answer my questions.

She did, however, inform a lacrosse parent, “We stand entirely by the report, which no one has questioned.” (Apparently Taylor, or Haagen, or blogs don’t count.) And Bowen, in a response to Carr Ramdath on which the lacrosse parent was cc’d, stated, “My advice is just to ignore this—no response is the appropriate response.”

Denigrating the Presumption of Innocence

Bowen and Chambers effusively praised one Brodhead statement: the April 5 letter. It was, they noted, “widely applauded.” They added that the early negative impression of Duke “was changed, rather markedly, we believe, by President Brodhead’s April 5 letter.”

Their only complaint? “It would have been better if a letter of this character could have been issued earlier.”

Here is the letter that Bowen and Chambers so welcomed. It didn’t even contain a throw-away line about the presumption of innocence; it falsely asserted that the lacrosse players had a history of racist behavior; and it opened with several paragraphs that strongly suggested a belief that a rape had occurred.

In a peculiar choice of words, Bowen and Chambers described Mangum not as the accuser but as “the victim of the alleged assaults.” Of the lacrosse players exercising their legal rights against untaped interviews with the police, on the other hand, they wrote, “The negative public reaction to these actions” (which included protesters carrying “castrate” signs or distributing “wanted” posters) “is perhaps understandable because they seemed to make Duke’s players, and Duke, appear to be much more interested in the team members than in the community and in the broader issues raised by the rape allegations.”

It appears that Bowen and Chambers did not consider prosecutorial misconduct, the academy’s rush to judgment, or the protesters’ willingness to make absolute moral judgment based on wildly incomplete information as among the “broader issues” the case raised.

The Administration’s Actions

Bowen and Chambers claimed to have received complete and candid cooperation from the administration. Yet several passages in their report do not correspond to facts that they could or should have known.

For instance, they described AD Joe Alleva as “accepting the resignation” of former coach Mike Pressler. (They also suggested that Pressler should have been fired earlier.) Yet, as we know now, Brodhead demanded Pressler’s resignation. Why, then, did Bowen and Chambers not state as much in their report?

On another front, their report repeatedly discussed the McFadyen e-mail, treating it as if it were a legitimate threat. Yet by May 2006, Duke officials knew that the e-mail was a vile parody of a vile piece of literature assigned in three Duke classes. Why, then, did Bowen and Chambers not state as much in their report?

Page five of the report conceded that “the players may have been lulled into a false sense of security” by Duke’s response, but made no mention of the administration’s highly controversial decision to suggest the possibility of Wes Covington (an old associate of Dean Sue Wasiolek) representing the captains in the early days. Did Bowen and Chambers not know of this decision?*

The Attitude of the Faculty

By the end March, what John Burness later described as “rumors” of improper classroom behavior by Duke professors had reached the administration. President Brodhead himself was given specifics of these allegations no later than April 7, or four weeks before Bowen and Chambers submitted their report. There is no evidence that anyone from the Duke administration ever investigated these allegations.

This oversight would seem an obvious topic for a report ostensibly designed to analyze the administration’s response to the case. Yet Bowen and Chambers didn’t even mention the issue—nor did they discuss the related question of the administration’s unwillingness or inability to enforce on professors the provisions of the Faculty Handbook.

Could their list of interviewees—which disproportionately included extremist critics of the lacrosse team—have explained the silence of Bowen and Chambers on this issue?

In my e-mails to Bowen, I asked him whether he was instructed by the administration not to look into this matter; or whether his ignoring the administration’s non-response to allegations of faculty misconduct was his own decision. He did not, of course, reply.

Misreading the Police Reports

Wrote Bowen and Chambers, “Duke officials might have responded differently had they been aware that one female member of the Duke Police Department, who was on the scene of the Emergency Department of the hospital and who attempted to calm down and reassure the young woman [Mangum], saw that she [Mangum] was ‘crying uncontrollably and visibly shaken . . . shaking, crying, and upset’—a description of behavior which doesn’t suggest that the case was likely to just ‘go away.’”

In fact, the behavior witnessed by Officer Sara Falcon suggested just that: even as biased a witness as SANE Nurse Tara Levicy conceded that she had never seen a real victim behave as Mangum did the morning of March 14.

Meanwhile, the report chastised Duke for relying on the “second-hand” word of Officer Christopher Day that the Durham Police officers at the hospital had strong doubts about Mangum’s credibility. The insinuation: Day was either wrong, or was being fed incorrect information by the DPD to “lull” Duke into false security.

In fact, as the ethics depositions made clear, Day’s report to his superiors was completely accurate. Perhaps Duke should have guessed that an unethical district attorney would have seized control of the case—but that failure can hardly be blamed on Officer Day.

The Pre-Virginia Tech World

Bowen and Chambers did criticize one senior Brodhead administrator—ironically, the paragon of political correctness himself, Larry Moneta.

After Duke Police obtained information about the possibility that Duke students might face drive-by shootings off-campus, Moneta sent a general e-mail passing along the notice and urging all students to take proper precautions.

This e-mail, wrote Bowen and Chambers, was considered by many a “coded and gratuitous statement about race and violence that only made a difficult situation worse.”

In the post-Virginia Tech world, I doubt that many people would treat seriously a report advocating that universities should downplay threats to student safety.

---------

To sum up: The official investigation of the administration’s performance—conducted by members hand-picked by the administration under investigation—concluded:

The only major Brodhead statement not even mentioning a presumption of innocence struck the right tone.

Duke shouldn’t have warned its students about security concerns that had come to the administration’s attention.

Duke should have paid more attention to a police officer whose report described atypical victim behavior and less attention to a police officer whose report about Mangum’s lack of credibility was accurate.

Duke—and, by inference, other universities—needed to balance the due process rights of its own students against promoting the race/class/gender agenda of its activist faculty.

There was no need, apparently, for the administration even to inquire about allegations of improper faculty behavior toward men’s and women’s lacrosse players.

93 comments:

...Duke—and, by inference, other universities—needed to balance the due process rights of its own students against promoting the race/class/gender agenda of its activist faculty.::Great point and this will probably be the road-map that we can use to help our universities grow and prosper.::GP

Truth died last night in Durham, North Carolina after a violent switch-blade fight with political correctness. Truth was preceded in death by her mother, Justice, and her father, Ethics. No service will be held, but donations can be made in care of "The Human Fund."

Surely Professor Johnson you have seen such studies a thousand times in the academy and politics. The people hired for the study know who is hiring them and they can figure out what their conclusions need to be if they hope to gain future jobs. Bowen for one has been around a long time and I bet he have been hired by lots of administrations to ex-post rubber stamp what they have done.

Let's face it...the faculty and administration at Duke are about as interested in having their actions scrutinized as Mike Nifong was. I don't know what it is about the water in North Carolina that seems to make people so scared to say, "I screwed up, I'm sorry. I'll learn from it and make sure it doesn't happen again."

I used to have a lot respect for Julius Chambers.....until I got to know more about him.

That man bleeds race......race.......race.

So boringl However, when you allow someone like Chambers to get himself inside the doors of Duke, he will spend all his time making idiots and tools of Brodhead and company. Anything to slam the school while essentially demanding more from it Gritty Gang of 88 style.

It's shameful and also says a lot about the black community right now.

The Bowen-Chambers Committee was a joke. A way of pretending to be doing something productive....when in reality......furthering an NCCU-type of agenda was their only goal.

"I don't know what it is about the water in North Carolina that seems to make people so scared to say, "I screwed up, I'm sorry. I'll learn from it and make sure it doesn't happen again." -- by 12:37

Um, 12:37, I dare say there are folks in all 49 other states that have trouble saying the same thing. The folks of my state, particurly those at the DPD, at Duke and in Nifong's circle, don't hold a monopoly on one of the seven deadly sins, to wit: pride. Pride is a strong motivator behind the fear of shame, this "fear" being a synonym for the "scared" of which you speak.

We TarHeels do have a monopoly, however, on the best pork barbecue in the nation -- particularly here in my part of the state east of I-95. I'll grant you, though, that good stuff can be found near Durham, at Allen & Sons, on the road from Chapel Hill to Hillsborough. It's cooked to perfection over hickory cut daily by the staff...

I don't know about the water everywhere in NC; however, I did read an article about water quality recently.

In 2001, sociologist Paul B. Stretesky and criminologist Michael Lynch showed that U.S. counties with high levels of lead had four times the murder rate of counties with low lead levels.

In 2002 Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh, compared lead levels of 194 adolescents. The arrested youths had lead levels that were four times higher.

"Impulsivity means you ignore the consequences of what you do, " said Needleman, one of the country's foremost experts on lead poisoning. Lead decreases the ability to tell yourself, "If I do this, I will go to jail."

Coincidentally, it has been reported for quite some time that Durham has had dangerously high lead levels.

Could this explain the rampant crime in Durham?

Mikey, Mangum, the Gritty Gang of 88, and so many enablers have been drinking Durham water.

Re 1:05...after reading the recent ridiculous editorial in the Daily Tar Heel, the barbeque is just about the only reason I can think of so much as opening my car door in the state.

Forget about the cops and public officials, after Mike Nifong was elected it's clear that voters down there couldn't find their asses with both hands. I'm more concerned with University officials....regardless at this point like it or not I am sorry to say that Durham in particular and NC in general are backwards laughingstocks.

There is not much new under the sun. These paragraphs are lifted straight from Wikipedia. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

On November 6, 1875, Hiram Revels, a Mississippi Republican and the first African American U.S. Senator, wrote a letter to President Ulysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted. Revels denounced Ames and the Carpetbaggers for manipulating the Black vote for personal benefit, and for keeping alive wartime hatreds:

Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it..... My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people.... The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.

The report acknowledges early on that the charges were false and then criticizes the Duke administration for a tepid reaction without making any proscriptive suggestions. What comprises the proper response to a protester who "thinks" he senses a wall of silence against an allegation that is known to be false.

The fact Kim Roberts lied during her 911 call was known well before this report was released. Why isn't this reflected in the report?

This group of acacemic hit-men, academic trash, fail to know anything about what is actually going on in so many areas of Durham. They purposefully were chosen to be on this committee to produce the report that they produced, so much for academic veritas. What a fraud this has been frome the start.

Yeah, you boys got oinked on the barbeque. Who in his or her right mind would stop in Durham now? I have stopped before, and I even visited Duke, but not now because something happened. It happened to the pigs. Bend over! Oink. Oink.

Incredibly, Bowen and Chambers,--folks who should have known better--willingly decided to whore themselves for Brodhead and the PC mess at Duke. What idiots, all. Bowen and Chambers have permamently demeaned themselves. We all deserve better than this circus and these morons.

Race/gender/sex should be uber alles. Forget presumed innocense. One world view is needed. Such a view is needed because, dare it be said, to implement . . . well, diversity. Yes, something happened at Duke, in Durham, in North Carolina . . . race/gender/sex the agenda, the curiculum uber alles says it all.

I thought I had exhausted my capacity for outrage over the lacrosse case but this post brought it all back.

This was not a whitewash of Duke. It was a criticism of the university for not following the script demanded by the gang of 88. The report follows the narrative that most college administrators have adopted for handling matters that deal with issues of race.

"When the alleged victim is black and the alleged accuser is white, the script does not include the presumption of innocence".

That single sentence captures the true story of what happened. Something needs to change and not just at Duke. We need to get back to the founding creed.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal".

Shame on the Bowens and Chambers of this country for turning their back on this principle.

Brodhead and Company chose to have a trio of PC race / gender pimps review Duke's performance in handling the early going of the Nifong Scandal Case and, guess what, they concluded that efforts relating to PC race / gender issues were not sufficiently addressed.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. How "gutsy" of Duke to choose Bowen and Chambers to conduct this "investigation." NOT!

I wonder what conclusions would have been drawn had Duke selected, say,

1. a former president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI

2. Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams

3. and given their ideologies they would have added to their panel a black woman who brought a more balanced position on race / gender issues to the inquiry.

Brodhead wanted a lynching of the Duke lax players in this investigation, he knew Bowen and Chambers would deliver said lynching, and he got exactly what he paid for.

He was the coauthor, with Derek Bok, of a piece of shit entitled "The Shape of the River," which purortedly dealt with great success that "diversity" is on elite college campuses.

If you care to read a scholarly report on the relationship between diversity and excellence (and this is probably the most important study on the subject), visit Irving Kristol's defunct journal The Public Interest. Think its site is still up. I'll go check.

Thought it was interesting that Moneta was criticized (by Bowen and Chambers) for warning students about the dangers they might face off-campus.

Bowen and Chambers basically say the same thingas the Martians in "Mars Attacks":

"Do not run. We are your friends."

Right. Do not duck when you hear gunfire. Those are FRIENDLY bullets!

The rest of their report is also a parody-of-a-parody, something akin to another line in the movie:

"All green of skin...800 centuries ago, their bodily fluids include the birth of half-breeds. For the fundamentaltruth self-determination of the cosmos, for dark is the suede that mows like a harvest."

Hmmm. Maybe they got help writing their report from Grant Farred...

As far as the warning from Moneta goes: might have been the most responsible thing anyonein the Duke administration had done,up to that point in the Hoax.

Do you like the idea that Dook tells its students not to be careful off-campus;not to hire attorneys when they're subjects/suspects in a felony investigation, and allows the local Barneys to rifle through students' belongings, fabricating evidence?

Scott, 7:14I wonder what conclusions would have been drawn had Duke selected, say,

1. a former president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI

I understand your point, (show me who's on the committee, and I'll tell you how the final report will read), but Hillsdale's former president is a bad example. He resigned in disgrace after the suicide of his daughter-in-law with whom he had been having an affair.

However, Hillsdale does have an interesting history with respect to race and gender - one that puts Duke to shame. Per wiki, "Blacks were admitted immediately after the 1844 founding and the College became the second in the nation to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women." And, "Hillsdale's undefeated football team refused to play in the 1956 Tangerine Bowl when the committee refused to allow the team's black players to join the white players on the field". This same school is a pariah to the race/class/gender obsessed because they refuse to worship at the altar of political correctness. In fact, they accept no federal money to preserve their academic freedom.

My son is a HS senior and national merit scholar. He intends to apply to Hillsdale and has no interest in Duke.

Balancing due process rights against the the legitimate prejudices of the faculty and its cultural agenda--such a powerful way to think about this. Straight from a totalitarian mindset--the Red Guards could not have expressed it better.

You get what you pay for. Broadhead knew he was getting a group with an agenda consistent with his Klan of 88. He asked for a report (and with conditions of which we are not aware) and he got a report (which pleased him).Bowen, Chambers, the token woman--AKA Curry, Moe, & Larry--could have written the report without looking into anything. The fact that they interviewed such reliable sources as Lube-ee-ah-no, Hollow-way, et al only goes to prove that the agenda was in and the hit was approved by the Duke administration family. Oh how proud Don Corleone would have been.Thanks KC. Your research and reporting have been enlightening and thought-provoking. If there is such a thing as a Pulitzer for blogs, you would win hands down. Woodward and Bernstein have nothing on you. All the President's Lies

If Durham wants to clean up it's mess, then Lane Williamson should have been hired to clean up the DA's office, Joe Arpayo should have been hired to clean up the DPD, and KC Johnson should be hired as President to clean up Duke. None of these three entities have any desire to be purified, so status quo will be the rule of the day.

The 3 Stooges in charge of investigating the "situation" with Duke LAX is like asking Hillary to investigate Whitewater or Cheney to investigate Halliburton. Hey, let's let Bill investigate problems with White House interns and the John Edwards investigate political campaigns paying for things like haircuts. Ah yes, we can get the right people in the right jobs at the right times. Mad Hatter, are you ready to eat lunch?

Somewhat OT, but I read in this morning's paper that Jim Black, former Speaker of the NC House was sentenced to 5 years hard time, a $50K fine, and three years' probation after serving his jail time. I am hoping this means there is a sudden turn-around here in NC and there won't be as much "business-as-usual" with public officials. Maybe some at the state level are looking at making an example of Nifong and Durham PD. Or am I being overly optomistic?

KCI am glad to see you revisit this report. When it came out it made me want to vomit. It essentially implied that the admin were racists (except Brodehead) and then the admin thanked them for the report. The report made no effort to examine how the University response may have contributed to the rush to judgement. For instance, when Duke appointed committees to examine the behavior of the LAX team, they published every detail of it. Instead of changing people's minds about whether the LAX players were racist and sexist, the details of the report were used in the press to further fan the flames against the defendants. The defendants were then being tarred with the bad acts of any and every LAX player across the years. When I read S. Taylor's essay at the time my reaction was "finally someone is awake here". And I am a liberal feminist--the problems with the University response should be obvious to everyone with intelligence.

Perhaps others have already pointed out this fact,...even so, it needs to be reiterated.

The Gang of 88 published their ad in the Duke Chronicle that same day.

That's a little too coincidental. Smells of collusion.

My bet ... the Gang of 88 extorted an overly agressive diversity message out of Broadhead ... knowing that he'd be sensitive to such a highly visible diversity group's threat to jump ship.

Houston Baker's move to Vanderbilt was probably already in the works at that time and my bet ... he led the charge knowing that he had a Golden Parachute already in place. I'll further bet that he would have been delighted if Broadhead had not agreed to abandon the "innocent until proven guilty" position. Then his already planned departure would have really riled up the diversity natives -- conclusively linking his departure to the diversity agenda with an exclamation mark.

Bowen and Chambers are two more academic emperors who have no clothes. I'm glad that Stuart Taylor earlier and KC Johnson now are pointing that out. I hope the analysis of the Bowen/Chambers report appears in the forthcoming book so that a larger public will be aware of how deep and how wide the analytic race-class-sex triad runs.

By selecting these charlatans to investigate the administration's handling of the case, Brodhead cements his alliance with the Group of 88.

Consider that the report is linked to the Duke admissions page. This is used as a marketing piece - Q&A for parents.

How does this approach differ from selling a home and leaving out details regarding the basement that floods, or the failed test results for the sale of a consumer good? It doesn't. The sins of omission are cause to fire many within the administration, including the President.

What happened to Truth-in-Advertising...the fraud is institutionalized?

The barrel of apples is more rotten that it appears.

A woeful lack of leadership, transparency, and governance. There are no checks and balances when the deck is stacked...

Laughable, who among ALL Duke students, administrators, faculty, alumni, etc. did not participate at the same age in the same sorts of activities? Very few I might imagine...oh the hypocrisy.

Then I read this, a few paragraphs below the statistical findings...

"...Another factor that likely contributes to the large number of lacrosse players cited for misconduct is their clannish nature...."

Clannish nature? What about the Klannish nature of the Klan of 88 and the other faculty frauds?

This too is linked via the Q&A for parents in the admissions section of the Duke web site.

I don't know which is more disconcerting the nature of how they present the story, the failure to admit major transgressions of omission, the lack of objectivity, or the fact that it is buried and somewhat difficult to find.

The axiom not to throw the baby out with the bath water would not have meaning were there not instances where maybe one should throw the baby out with the bath water. This may be one of those times. I'm hard-pressed to think of any others...

Fabulous analysis KC. As you know Bowen and company will not respond because you are not part of their "sphere" of PC, arrogant, elitists (the old limousine liberals now prius liberal).

Maybe you can find a a person who they feel obligated to answer to (Larry King?) to ask those questions.

To all the alums who want to send in 88 cents or 91 cents. Great idea. I suggest that you send in a check for part, say 40cents and the rest in coin. This will be expensive to process and the auditors will also hate it. If possible use the envelopes where Duke pays the postage....then use all coins, neatly taped to a piece of card board, of course.

Better yet, request that your contribution be used, not by general fund, but for say, engineering faculty, or the rowing program. Adds another layer of administrative annoyance and cost.

If any University places such little importance on the safety of its students to cover its own ass, that is the lowest they can get. If my child was a student at Duke and knowing now they ran right over the Duke 3 and their Constitutional rights, allowed DPD to question them without attorneys, in fact advised them not to tell their parents what was going on, allowed the DPD to search their rooms without warrants and now we find out they downplayed their might be drive by shootings? I would be on the door step of Broadhead and demand the Board of Directors to explain their actions. Putting anyone's child in such jeapardy is the lowest crime. What if there was a bomb scare, would they ignore it and move on hoping it won't go off and allow your child to unkowingly sit in danger. How dare they put such a low price on the lives of their students for the sake of their good name. I say start the Federal Investigators in now. Parents who spend enourmous amounts of money to have their children educated should at least have the Federal Government backing the safety of those students when the Universities themselves are negligent.

The composition of the committee was designed to appease the anti-lax players crowd. The fact that the delivery of the report was scheduled for such a short period meant that no meaningful, balanced investigation would take place. The CCI membership followed the same pattern. It was a PR move.

The surprise was Professor Coleman's committee, which actually did investigate and did publish data it gathered. Its kernels of truth have continued to be a burr in Brodhead's saddle.

I used to have more regard for Bok, but evidently that was an illusion. This case has certainly shed more light on the current state of elite universities, and it is not a pretty sight.

The report mentions that there is 'too much of a silo structure at Duke' that needs to be integrated.

That sentence is standard boilerplate for management reports and as per usual...the report does not speak to the 'why' for the silo structure.

It is often left unsaid that academics do not identify with and have no understanding of undergraduate college students who are not younger versions of the faculty, staff and administration.

I suspect that is the root cause of so many problems at Duke.

The Office of Student Affairs is told to 'handle' the nameless undergraduate students who are not academic stars.

And handle them they do!

Duke needs to make the commitment to undergraduate education or get out of the business of trying to pretend that they understand youngsters...who have this amazing tendency to behave like...youngsters. ::GP

"And, in a stunning passage, they explained that Duke needed to balance its students’ due process protections against the fact that “in the eyes of some faculty and others concerned with the intersecting issues of race, class, gender, and respect for people, the Athletic Department, and Duke more generally, just didn’t seem to ‘get it.’”

Hamiton Fish and the other "post modernist" at Duke would have all influenced by a race/gender/class agenda regardless of their own race/gender/class agenda without a care to their need or anyyone's need to presumed innocence. Some things derived at independently of race/gender/class and academic agenda are to be forgotten. Many would not accept the new Constitution without a promise of protected rights, one of which was a presumption of innocence. The Group88 would be the first to decry their own behavior if it were behavior directed at themselves. What they seem to want is a monolitic interpretation of these rights that benefit only themselves for argued reasons of race/gender/class because, after all, they are in the definition business. Pehaps Duke could hire a cloned Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Idi Amin or perhaps a Mugabe. You see these defining people do come in all colors, but Group88 being a diverse group in eveything but ideology knows that. They are smart enough to know that aren't they?

Due process is absolute. Without due process there is no law. The pot-banger has spoken . . . er, banged a pot . . . or . . . er, smoked one. It should be smoked some. Is this a quote from the Duke Group88?

Alas not. What you describe here is characteristic of higher education in general. Bowen et al are not natives of Wonderland. Or rather, there are two Wonderlands: Durham and the Academy in general. Probably most people just don't fully appreciate how typical such thinking is in higher education now.

The Bowen-Chambers Report is simultaneously chilling and laughable. One can find on every page one something that to howl with laughter or rage. I was looking for something else when I found this in the report, on page 8:

The so-called "wall of silence" surrounding the athletes was a result of the lawyers' advice to their clients in the midst of an ongoing investigation. The negative public reaction to these actions, however, is perhaps understandable because they seemed to make Duke's players, and Duke, appear to be much more interested in the team members than in the community and the broader issues raised by the rape allegations.

My reaction: "'Duke's players' were facing 30 years in prison. Was 'the community' facing 30 years in prison? Were 'the broader issues' facing 30 years in prison?

"So you're saying that the Duke players should've been as interested in 'the community' that believed what the players knew to be a lie and the Duke players should've been as interested in 'the broader issues' raised by what the players knew to be a lie than the Duke players should've have been in the prospect that they would be imprisoned for up to 30 years."

No wonder the pseudo-intellectuals who generated this ... document are afraid to answer questions about it.

Which brings up the second point (on this page alone): The Bowen and Chambers assert that the players' "wall of silence" was due to advice of attorneys. To what do they attribute their own "wall of silence" today? KC quotes one of the authors saying "We stand entirely by the report, which [sic] no [sic] one [sic] has [sic] questioned [sic]." Well, are they "standing by" the report or are they hiding from it. One can't "stand by" something when one is hiding from it. On whose advice are they hiding from questions -- their lawyers'? Or do they have just enough cranial capacity to realize when they need to get as far away from this piece of shit report as they can?

Apropos his book reviews of "Manhunt" (on Lincoln's assassination) and "American Gunfight" (on the attempted assassination of Truman), Craig Henry posted the following at his blog "Lead and Gold."

While directed towards a different issue (terrorism), Henry's remarks may have some relevance to the Hoax/Frame.

"There is a cautionary lesson in the silence of Oscar Collazo and Booth's abettors. Sometimes investigators close the books too early on a case. They fail to discover all the threads in a plot because the perps maintain their silence or persist in their lies.

"This is especially true when the culprits are driven by ideology rather than the greed of common criminals. The Rosenbergs, after all, kept silent even though that meant a date with the electric chair. Alger Hiss kept lying for a half century."

Bowen, Chambers, and Ramdath still won't even acknowledge that there was a bus that they missed. The Trinity trumps again, I guess.

I found what I was looking for, and it raises what I think is a point that you will want to make in a subsequent posting.

Near the bottom of page 4, the report notes that Duke administrators were told that DPD members found CGM's allegations non-credible and likely to result in no charges, and as a result, Duke's initial response was muted. This was a "major mistake", says the report on page 5:

Taking at face value the reported comments of Durham police officers (and perhaps others), and allowing their interpretations of credibility and seriousness to shape Duke's thinking, was a major mistake. Dean Wasiolek told us that she now agrees with this assessment and in the future will do much more to check out serious allegations on her own, rather than rely on second-hand information and judgments of others. [footnote omitted] A member of the Duke law faculty was similarly categorical in stating: "Duke can't rely on second-hand reports about credibility." [emphasis added]

But now we have Pres. Brodhead excusing his own outrageous rush-to-judgment on the "assertions of public officials [sic -- he means ONE public official: Nifong] that the allegations were true." But it was known at the time that Nifong had not interviewed ANYONE at the party -- not CGM, not the lacrosse players. Nifong was talking about his reading of the (then nonexistent) nurse's report -- that is, Nifong was giving a third-hand assessment of credibility.

Thus, the report tells us that Duke was "wrong" to take actions based on the "second-hand" assessments of credibility provided by first-responders (people who actually talked to CGM and the lacrosse players), but Duke was "right" to take actions based on the assessments third-hand assessment made by Mike Nifong -- who had interviewed neither the accuser nor the accused. And this is the position of Pres. Brodhead today.

No wonder Duke settled as fast as it did. If those boys took less than $20 million from Duke, it was a gift to the university.

We TarHeels do have a monopoly, however, on the best pork barbecue in the nation.

I've recently moved from Texas to Florida. There is mexican food here. It's baaaaaaaaad mexican food, but it's still recognizably mexican food. However, there is nothing here that is recognizably "BBQ". It's all shreded ("pulled"). In fact, if these restaurants were in Texas, they would be fined for false advertising. And btw, what is this race-car thing all about? I have to wait for ESPN to see a rodeo???

anon. @ 11:03: That is a quote that galls me more than any other. Because the Duke LAX team did not kowtow to the diversity god, they "just didn't seem to get it."

As was known to many reasonable and objective people at the time of the report, and as has been made abundantly (crystal?) clear since then, Duke and her faculty "just didn't seem to get it," and they still haven't gotten it. In fact, it appears they seem to be avoiding it, as they will not talk or write about it.

Diversity hubris takes a back seat (way back, possibly in another vehicle miles behind) when it comes to the protection of the students that a school has a duty to care for based upon "in loco parentis."

____________

In 2005, K.C. Johnson traveled back in fiction to confront the giant squid and save Captain Nemo from the subsequent depression it caused by using modern psychiatric techniques and drugs. He then traveled forward in fiction to 1993 so he could beat up every cast member of "Walker, Texas Ranger" each time they showed up on screen. -- From: "Getting to Know K.C. Johnson, READER'S DIGEST, pp. 67-70 (May 2007).

Until I read this post, I had forgotten about the Bowen-Chambers report's treatment of Larry Moneta's e-mail warning to students. That made me mad when I first read the report and it still makes me mad.

As a Duke parent, I would have considered it the height of irresponsibility for Moneta NOT to send such an e-mail, and having read the e-mail, I know that it struck the right note. It was precautionary rather than alarmist and went out of its way to say that the reports of threatened shootings were based on rumors and were quite possibly not true, but that students should exercise caution just in case. There was nothing "coded" or "gratuitous" about it.

This reminds me of the effort by someone on the Durham Responds listserv (it may actually have been Kim Curtis--I'm remembering this from, I think, a Durham-in-Wonderland post several months ago) to suggest that the Duke student who reported being assaulted at the Cookout Restaurant was a liar and troublemaker. The reflexive discounting of any information or position that doesn't accord with one's preconceptions makes real dialogue and progress well nigh impossible (and unfortunately for our society, the "something happened" crowd in the Duke lacrosse case has no monopoly on this quality).

1:29Stallone turned 60 on the same day George Bush turned 61. He's been an AARP since he turned 50. The AARP is another liberal money grabbing organization. They start early for membership, trying to make you old early so you'll send in your membership dues for a longer time.

I am not in publishing, but I am a successful public relations consultant specializing in the pharmaceutical industry. The poster "Polanski" gave you invaluable advice with respect to your title, and therefore how you and Mr. Taylor should market your book. By having the courage to focus on the evil agendas (that would be my professional suggestion for the major title, "Evil Agendas") of the principal players, you will hit even the mainstream media with a cannon blast. Professor, you brilliantly pointed out in today's blog offering that "evil agendas" were always in the foreground. Please take my advice.

It's my understanding that KC and I were both led to this case because of the "Listening Ad" of April 6th, 2006. I think KC should focus at LEAST 1/2 of his book on the control and pervasiveness of the ideology of the 88ists at Duke.

Yes, others like David Horowitz and Dinesh D'Souza have published books about political correctness (what Duke students call "diversity racism"), but they've always done an "overview", and not focused on one specific case, as here. Also, KC and Taylor could bring the "WASP perspective" :)

This blog has done more to fight the erosion of due process in the name of some "community"--of "victims" of any kind than all the ACLU's fundraisers, walkathons and protests in the past few years.

Thanks for being so generous with us: I wold have paid a premium rate for this blog, or a paper that published it. I hope your book sells like mad.

MSM wail about the erosion of their circulation rates, but 90% of the material revealed here was never found by them or was ignored. They were very late and grudging arrivals to the Truth.

CBS news never got close to this story, despite its multi-million dollar news budget: but they are tyring a "new look" for Katie Couric. The New York Times reporter "read" the "entire" file--like the Titanic's captain read all the ice-warnings.

We can only imagine what city and county government would be like if "national" newspapers used this type of focused and continuous reporting.

I hope people began to insist on a voice in the tenure process. That some necessary adjustment take place to remove the Ward Churchills, Houston Bakers, Karla Holloways etc. from American Universities. And to insist that universities sucking on tax dollars teach solid courses about the US Constitution (other than demeaning the founders as slaveowners etc.).

Speaking to KC and Taylor bringing a WASP perspective is wrong-headed in the sense that I have to be a WASP to understand, know, or appreciate a "WASP" perspective. The point is due process, hammered out in the "WASP" experience is not a "WASP" possession or piece of property or entitlement to be held by WASPs only. It has been given to all of us, and it belongs to all of us, and this is something that the Duke Group88 clearly forgot. Don't forget due process as the Duke Group88 seem to have. Not forgetting is the real "WASP" experience or should be as it should be all of our experiences. This is part of what was/is so horrible at Duke. The Duke administration led by its president and numerous faculty, Duke Group88, seemed to forget at a critical time, or rather, it appears that some of them never knew due process as it could be or should be applied to others.

"Evil Agendas" is a horrendous idea for a title, one guaranteed to turn people away from the bookshelf. The simplistic Us vs Them absolutism it implies is not worthy of Johnson and Taylor, nor does it accurately describe the forces at work in American race relations.

"Misguided Agendas" might be more suitable, but neither choice works, really. "Agenda" -- reminiscent of the much hated "to do" list -- is a poor word for a title. A good book title needs a touch of poetry and/or a powerful, descriptive phrase, e.g., "I Am A Strange Loop" (Douglas Hofstadter), or "It's not About the Truth" (Mike Pressler).

You are so right. I am wrong. I should have been more careful and checked. My memory played a trick on me. I should have taken notes at the time I put together the 11:04 (I believe) post. Gosh, if the DPD had only made an apology or Nifong or any of those in academia maybe we would all feel better. Anyway, thanks

Thanks for some facts about Hillsdale. I didn't know about the former president's problems.

I did know they accept no federal funding and I was using Hillsdale, in general, as an example of a school that doesn't toady up to the PC nonsense. From what I can tell, it seems to be one of a select few these days.

As a former resident of MI and a current resident of NC, I also know the winters in Hillsdale are colder than in Durham, but your son can be warmed by the thought that if he avoids Duke, he also avoids Lubiano, Holloway, McClain, Chafe, Starn, Neal, and a whole host of other bad actors. As a bonus he avoids Durham / Bell, Baker, Gottlieb, Himan, Ripberger, Lamb, Hodge, Addison, Michaels, Ashley, Joyner, Barber, and a like contingent of worthless scoundrels.

The appointments of Bowen and Chambers appear to have been calculated to affirm Brodhead's decision rather than to conduct an investigation . (The appointments also reveal that Brodhead likely believed a crime had been committed and that the lacrosse players were guilty .) How could Bowen and Chambers with their respective agendas resist directing all the hatred and blame anywhere but on the lacrosse team and the banished coach .

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review